Friday Featured Photographer – Ashley Rae Jensen

It’s that time of the week again, and we couldn’t be more excited about this week’s featured photographer — ASHLEY RAE! She is an influential and inspirational person to many young photographers, and we know she will take her photography career above and beyond. She has been so kind to give us a peek into her crazy, and hectic, but mostly wonderful life as a photographer. We hope she will inspire you, the way she has inspired us here at pictureline! She brings a smile to our face every time she stops by the store!

What camera(s) do you shoot with and why?

I actually JUST sold my Canon Mark III to upgrade to a Mark IV. I’ve heard amazing things about it and I’m so excited about the wifi feature, the touch screen, and I’ve heard it has great low light capability. I also use a Canon 6das my back up camera. I have nothing against Nikon, I just learned on a Canon so that’s what I stick with! I love my cameras, I call them my little babies. My husband once made fun of me when we were in the car because a potential “accident” almost happened and he thought I was more worried about my cameras getting hurt than I was about him getting hurt. We’ll never know… 😉

What do you feel like is the most challenging part about being a photographer?

Comparing myself to other, “more successful”, photographers. I think every artist does it, and it sucks. It helps to have a good support system that will remind you over and over again how talented they think you are. I also have to force myself to remember that as well.

How do you feel about social media and how it impacts your photography business?

I LOVE SOCIAL MEDIA. I’ve always been an advocate for social media. I started my instagram pretty early and I had friends tell me that I was wasting my time which is kind of funny to think about. I would say that about 70% of my clients come from social media and the other 30% come from referrals. I think social media is such a fun way to interact with potential and current clients and it also allows you to showcase your work.

What is your favorite part about being a photographer?

I have two favorite things. 1. I’ve always had an artistic side to me but never really figured it out until I picked up a camera. I instantly saw the world completely different. I love that I get to create art. 2. I am such a people person and I love that I get to meet new people almost daily! Seriously some of my best friends started out as “clients”.

You have a beautiful, natural style to your photos, how did you find your editing style? And do you use any presets or create your own?

I’ve been doing professional wedding photography for 5 years now and I FINALLY found an editing style that I like and that I feel like is completely MINE. I cannot tell you how many presets I’ve purchased because I wanted my photos to look like someone else’s. Through a lot of trial and error I finally realized that no matter what presets I use, I am going to tweak them to make them look how I want and it will never look like the photos I was trying to copy. I sat down one day and thought to myself that my style has always been pretty clean and natural and that’s how I wanted my photos to look. I started from a clean slate, using Ben Sasso’s Heck Yeah presets and completely tweaked them to make them my own. I first made that preset on a shoot where the bride’s name was Carol, so I call them my “carol presets”.